Why I started using dual-licensing for Vue tables 2

#vue #opensource

I've been working on Vue Tables 2 for almost 3 years now. I probably spent more than 1,000 hours of work on it. I love this project. I got a lot of positive feedback and it seems like many devs found it useful, which is exactly why I started it. But recently, it became a bit too much to handle. So many emails with feature requests, so much work on new features, writing documentation, fixing bugs, not to mention working on the soon to be released Vue 3 version. Like many of you guys, I also have a day job, and I just can't afford to spend so much time at the expense of my paid work hours. Got rent to pay and mouths to feed.

I tried asking for donations. It didn't work. So, I've decided to start monetizing it with dual licensing. As of version 1.6.0 vue-tables-2 is available on Github under GPLv3 license, while offering an MIT version as a paid subscription. The previous versions prior to the license change are still available as MIT, so no one should get hurt if they're currently using it in their projects - but future releases will be GPLv3.

I know this seems drastic, but the next version - which includes a huge improvement in building custom templates, by allowing the user to swap any table component with his own implementation - takes an enormous amount of work, and I've decided that in order to take this project to the next level, I will need stable financial support from the companies that use it commercially. Charging a few dollars a month for a license to use it commercially seems reasonable to me.

I intend to continue building Vue tables 2 (and 3!), and make it a better open source project for all of us.

I will keep you guys posted on how this goes.

https://github.com/matfish2/vue-tables-2

Top comments (6)

Dennis Keirsgieter • Dec 19 '19

It says for paying customers: Priority support
Does that only include helping or also feature development?
Our company would not mind paying at all if it had the same features vuetify tables have (plus a bit more without us hacking it ourself) plus the MD looks.

Matanya • Dec 19 '19

Thank you for your reply.

As for your question, priority support means that a subscribed user issue will be bumped up to the head of the queue and dealt with ASAP. If it's a bug report or a question I'll do my best to resolve the issue within 48 hours. As for feature requests, it really depends on size and complexity, and on the total number of subscribed users, but again, subscribed users FR will take priority.

As for MD looks, I've just released version 2 - currently in beta - under the next tag in npm. It allows the user to construct his own UI, without exposing all the underlying functionality, thus creating a separation of concerns between the data layer and the UI. Moreover, the user can swap single components without messing with the rest of the table. You can read more about it here: matanya.gitbook.io/vue-tables-2/cu...